Free The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) by Carter Roy Page B

followed suit, planting his hand between my shoulder blades and shoving so hard that I thought I was going to fall flat on my face.
    Then I heard something strange: applause. The crowd around us was clapping . Just a few people at first, but then everyone joined in. And why? Because they believed what the blonde woman had told them: that we were criminals. For some reason, I felt ashamed. I dropped my head as we crossed the parking lot.
    But Greta wasn’t so easily embarrassed. “Are you people kidding me? We’re being kidnapped, you idiot s — o w !” The woman smacked Greta again, and she fell to her knees on the hot pavement. Without another word, Greta used her cuffed hands to shove herself back up. She kept her head held high.
    Greta was right: We weren’t criminals. The people around us had no idea what was going on. “We’ve done nothing wrong!” I sai d — a nd got a sharp jab at the back of my head from Mr. Four.
    And then we’d reached the SUV. Mr. Four and the woman pushed Greta in first, me right after. They opened our cuffs and then locked them around the armrests in the backseat.
    “While we see to a few things,” the woman told us, “you will be silent and will draw no attention to yourselves. Or there will be consequences.”
    Mr. Four went to the rear of the SUV and dug out a couple of long black zippered plastic bags, like the sort people carry suits in. He followed the woman back across the broad parking lot to the truck.
    After a minute, the big rig slowly moved backward. Several minutes after that, Mr. Four returned, hunched beneath the weight of those two long black bags, one slung over each shoulder. They looked…full. Of something.
    With a grunt, he heaved the bags into the SUV. Then he closed the back door. We were next. He rattled the chains on our cuffs to see if we were still locked up tight.
    Without a word, he turned and headed back into the crowd.
    “Was that what I think it was?” I asked, picturing the bags in the back and feeling queasy.
    “I don’t even want to know,” Greta said. Suddenly her cuff was swinging loose on her arm. “But why don’t we get away from here before they come back and show us.”
    “Wh a — h ey, how’d you do that?” I asked, but then answered myself, “Oh, let me guess: Your dad’ s — ”
    “Right. He taught me how to pick locks. These are standard-issue Peerless cuffs, an old-school brand that’s a total cakewalk if you know what you’re doing. Which I do.” Clenched in her fingers was a crooked bit of wire that looked like one of the pins that kept her mess of red hair in place.
    “Unlock me, too!”
    “No time.” She climbed forward between the front seats and slid behind the wheel like she did this sort of thing every day. “We have to get out of here. Those dumb jerks are so sure of themselves that they left the keys.” She snapped the seat belt, adjusted the mirror, and gently cranked the ignition. “Pull that door shut.”
    I slid the side door closed with my free hand as the engine came to life with a quiet rumble. In a moment, Greta had the SUV moving.
    “Your dad taught you how to drive, too?” I asked in disbelief, but she didn’t answer. She nudged the gas and soon the SUV was rolling away like we had just stopped to fuel up and now were getting back on the road.
    I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I gasped for air.
    “You all right back there?” Greta asked, her eyes on the road.
    “I can’t believe this,” I said. “Are we really getting away?”
    “I hope so,” Greta said, glancing into the rearview mirror and biting her lip. “Unless they have…wow.”
    I twisted and looked over my shoulder. Through the smoky back window of the SUV, I could see the truck stop dwindling, getting smaller behind us. And I could see something else: the blonde woman and Mr. Four running after us, keeping pace with the SUV.
    “They’re chasing us!” I shouted. “You have to go faster!”
    When we